The Fours Secrets of Successful Soil Building
This year many of us went back to our gardens to grow more food in the face of an uncertain future. Since plants constantly remove nutrients from the soil, if these nutrients are not replenished, plant health in your future crops will be jeopardized. Your garden will never be as good as it was the year before. So here are my four secrets of successful soil building. Secret Number One: Compost is the gardeners’ version of humus, but it is produced much more quickly. The quality of compost as an organic soil additive depends on the residues from which it is made, as well as the extent to...
Read MoreBack to Eden
For years I have been pondering the scenario of what would happen to seed supplies if the whole world suddenly became food insecure and people all around the globe started to grow food. I could not imagine what would cause such an unlikelihood, yet today here we are seeing an unprecedented reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic, causing a return to the land and expansion of food gardening not seen since the Victory Gardens of World War 2. This has caused sweeping demands in seed sales and food starts as folk who have never grown food plant food gardens, and others switch their gardens to grow...
Read MoreKALE – NUTRITIOUS AND DELICIOUS
Kale is not just really GOOD for you but is also one of the easiest and longest lasting garden vegetables to grow. It has the highest levels of beta-carotene of all the brassicas. It contains 10 times the Vitamin A of lettuce and 3 times the Vitamin C of oranges. It also has more B vitamins than whole wheat bread, and more calcium than milk! It is so versatile in the kitchen that Sharon Hanna describes 80 + delicious recipes in her Book of Kale, The Easy-to-Grow Superfood, everything from kale chips to smoothies and kale shepherd’s pie with lentils. Check out a 2021 seed catalogue to...
Read MoreThe Fours Secrets of Successful Soil Building
This year many of us went back to our gardens to grow more food in the face of an uncertain future. Since plants constantly remove nutrients from the soil, if these nutrients are not replenished, plant health in your future crops will be jeopardized. Your garden will never be as good as it was the year before. So here are my four secrets of successful soil building. Secret Number One: Compost is the gardeners’ version of humus, but it is produced much more quickly. The quality of compost as an organic soil additive depends on the residues from which it is made, as well as the extent to...
Read MoreDiscovering The Artist Within!
Many moons ago, I remember asking the person standing next to me at an artist’s studio party if he did anything that was artistic. He replied that he didn’tdo anything artistic, because he was only a gardener. I replied that I was also a gardener, but that I experienced gardening as painting in 3D. By considering design, shapes, colours and combinations I would create the garden of my dreams; but as a garden is continually growing and changing it becomes an ongoing living work of art. I have always been envious of artists. They take their talent for granted. It must be the way their...
Read MoreFood Trends
‘Where are we going? What am I doing in this hand basket?’ It’s looking pretty bleak out there, and many of us are asking ourselves what we can do about it. Well it so happens that changing the way we eat can have a profound effect on the planet. Much of our food is dominated by meat products and processed foods, which require lots of energy to produce, process and package. Worldwide, livestock is the cause of 15% of the climate crisis and it is also responsible for vast areas of deforestation. The Globe and Mail recently reported that 58% of food produced in Canada is wasted or lost...
Read MorePreserving Gardening History
In my life as a food grower I have always chosen heritage varieties of plants to grow. That’s because I want to be able to collect seeds from my plants for next year’s harvest. I believe that without seeds you are never really food secure, and by choosing open-pollinated varieties you can collect seeds from your garden whenever you need them. Over the years, as my enthusiasm for producing food increased, I have also saved a lot of money by saving my own seeds. There are many food plants that self-seed readily, so you only have to plant them once and they will reappear in your garden....
Read MorePerennial Food Plants
Have you ever stopped to consider the benefit of adding perennial food plants to your garden? Unlike most food plants that are annuals, which rotate around the garden, perennial food plants require a permanent location where they will increase in size and production over time. They are best planted at the edges or the corners of the garden, to keep them from interfering with annual crop rotations. Here are some of my favourites. Globe artichokes Cynara scolymus are native to the Mediterranean, but given the right situation, they can be long-lived in temperate climates too. Plants grow to...
Read MorePreserving the Harvest
There’s a resurgence in preserving foods right now and there are many ways of doing this. It ranges from basic storage for winter squash and root crops such as onions and potatoes, to freezing, canning, dehydrating, pickling and fermenting. I often take an ingredient and put it by using several techniques; for example I dehydrate plums for compotes and snacking, and make plum jam, as well as freezing them for winter desserts. The freezer presents the least time consuming method of food preservation. Food rotation is important, because the maximum storage time for quality frozen fruit...
Read MoreThere’s A Frog In My Fridge!
We used to offer farm stays to foreign travellers when we owned an acreage in Victoria; many people from around the world stayed with us over the years. I’ll never forget the day I opened the fridge to find a large taped brown box inside. Upon enquiring as to what this was, a young man from California sheepishly informed me that there was a frog in the box. At first I merely laughed him off, responding that he could “pull the other leg as it had bells on it”. “Ask your husband. He told me to do it!” he replied. Upon further enquiry my husband told me that Dustin had found an...
Read MoreA Garden of Memories
They say ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ and it seems this can apply to gardens too. As I take stock of all the plants from friends’ gardens, I realize that what I have is a garden full of memories. They go back to my earliest days when I had a gardening business in Victoria called Forget Me Not Gardening, and I was taking care of 30 gardens. That meant I got to know my plants pretty fast, and some were more arresting than others. Margaret Gordon was a 95-year old spinster living in the same house she had grown up in, in Oak Bay. One day I walked into her backyard where the...
Read MoreGardening in a Changing Climate
Is it just me or has it been looking pretty bleak outdoors? I know every tim I see the sunshine I soak it up like a starved person. This winter has been just plain depressing, colder with more snow and rain and less sun than ‘normal’. It seems to me there is no normal anymore. Once the weather gets messed up you have to take what you get, but it can play havoc on some peoples livelihoods, and it definitely affects the rhythms of food production. That’s what it’s been like for farmers and growers over the years, with climatic conditions changing to longer cooler spring seasons. With...
Read MoreTraumatic Kitchen Renovation
Here’s a fast review of my worst winter in 50 years experience. Start with the longest winter ever, add the worst flu I’ve ever experienced, smother with the depressing ‘Trump’ effect, and toss in a full kitchen renovation and you get the idea? Gratefully the sun has just reappeared and spring is just around the corner and we are almost coming to the end of the kitchen renovation, an experience nobody could have forewarned me about! I met up with a kitchen designer employed by a cabinet store in November, and in no time he provided a plan and a shopping list. He was going to...
Read MoreLiving In The Light
I have always had a burning desire to understand how the Universe works, what life is all about and the meaning and purpose for which I am here. This is a profound question I have often asked myself. I consider myself foremost a spiritual being. I have spent my life seeking my higher purpose. My faith has been tested many times. On my spiritual path I allow the mystical power of living with consciousness to help guide me through. I believe that each one of us has a true purpose and each one of us is a channel for the Universe. After we are born in the body we forget who we really are...
Read MoreKeep Super Computer Humming
It’s a fact that as you get older bodily functions slow down and parts don’t work as well as they once did. As I approach my ‘golden years’ I want to make sure that the years ahead are indeed golden, so I recently signed up for a one year diploma at the Canadian School of Natural Nutrition in Nanaimo. I support their credo that the body is qualified to heal itself with a healthy whole foods diet and good lifestyle choices and I want to find out more. The 80:20 ratio of healthy to not that healthy works best for me. Fanaticism is no fun. It is recommended to limit intake of...
Read MoreOn The Garden Path
The Season for Winter Squash. We know fall has arrived when piles of colourful squash start gathering at the roadside stands. Last year I enjoyed spectacular display at McNabs Farm, where Farmer McNab told me he was growing 100 different varieties of squash, 50 of which were pumpkins, and that he had shopped the world for the seeds. I was quite amazed to discover them sold out by end of the growing season – Canadians sure love their squash! We grew a good selection of winter squash on the farm this year – butternuts and buttercups, spaghetti and acorn, red kuri, Turk’s turban,...
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